So much pruning, "...while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes..." or you might say death comes to that which will not yield your greatest potential. With accepting what you must do to move forward... "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all..." first encounter the misunderstanding and accompaniment of shame that must be endured. The cutting off your own self away, out and into the Call on your life; not that which you can canonize, memorialize "Launch into the deep and cast...yourself - the net - into the waters of life; and only after toiling with legs crossed, sock ablaze, polished wings on tips of Italian leather...Santoni, maybe, just...maybe. The investment is great, the endowments that secure the pay for your presence even greater. Write about it all, greek gaze, greek nature of the economy of learned wisdom framing it all. Regalia is ever-ready, colors, insignia, signing, sophisticated gangs, hellenized and colorized ready to flex, to stomp, poses set, scripts to write...new age gospel. So much investment...so much pruning.

Do not follow the path...No one will ever understand the peculiar decisions, the fire and starts, the delays and misgivings that accompany moments of success and frame the disastrous memories which most remember. Go where there is no path to begin a trail...

Fait accompli? Maybe...yes, no, okay then.

The light that so readily draws love, admiration, desire is also the same light burns, scorches the earth, and leaves you standing alone, standing up...if I be lifted up...

It's that force, the one that you try to control, to bridle with normality, the muzzling of the shekinah, the domestication of brilliance, which defies all settling.

Jealousy goes misunderstood and decisions continually lead to casualties. Things, places, people...no one who has left home... We don't get it, no one gets it. Life lived with the hope of safety, dangerous crossings, greatness looming...easy to love, in the end left hard to be forgiven. The seduction of the light...the life...the Call. So much, so many left in the wake of unexamined jealousy. It cannot be reasonably explained, the jealousy which consumes all meaning and promises. Left pointing to scripture and verse, we continue to believe as the casualties mount. Getting wiser, getting older...people, the love moves on. The Call knows a DJ can never save any life, the Call waits, but earthly love cannot, at least most times fathom a way out of it all. The plow of time, the sacrifice of sons, the sky of dreams, the pit and the Potiphar, the hope of fulfillment and then understanding jealous. I hope they see it. I hope they see it. It was always the best of intentions, sincerely yours, but never mine, but His.

We do not understand jealousy and we therefore err putting earthly love between us and the Call. Adjust your sight.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

You are a fighter, not as nimble as before or never was. Rather bullish in fragile spaces, nevertheless fighting. Others believing in you is fleeting, conditional to the point of suffering the hemorrhaging of emotional homelessness. If only you can touch the hem of his garment you will be made whole.

Being all in means that you are all out for what is before you. Yet, this fight is momentous as in the will to believe so much that you burn the plow and butcher the oxen. You can't go back...to what?

You're convinced of what's ahead, you see it even if no one else can. Sounds crazy, huh? Joseph dreams means the pit, Potiphar, and the prison for you. All this before the promise manifests. Long days and longer nights. Endure this, endure this too.

You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.

A story for the ages. Turn not to the left or to the right. Stay the course. You win...big. In distress, stones readied and in the hands of those bitter for loss, strengthen yourself in the Lord your God.